INTERNET – vultures circle as “Darksyde” Phil Burnell’s recent “crash out” has engulfed long-time contemporary Tim Pool. Burnell has seen a recent downturn in his Kick stream viewership due to fierce competition from “misery merchants” and “drama farmers,” to which he attributes Pool’s recent Israel gambit.
“These streamers like Tim Pool, they have no content, so they all rely on bullying, on drama, on making fun of people. It’s the most boring bullshit you can make content on!”
Burnell and Pool are no strangers to online. They each broke new ground in the 2010s, championing distinct strains of alternative media. Burnell, a micro-celebrity in the Streetfighter community, became an early YouTube heavy weight with his irreverent critique of video game design. Pool meanwhile struck out as a significant figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement. A former skater, he used urban wisdom to provide on-the-ground coverage of Obama admin atrocities, making friends with Anonymous along the way.
Despite their status as titans of online, both have been rocked by costly scandal. Tenet Media, the conglomerate that owns Pool’s “Timcast” has been investigated for a “scheme” where dark money was secured to produce propaganda for the Russian Federation.
Kremlin cash subsequently blocked, Pool found himself unable to maintain the salary of his staff, his private security detail and the overhead on his West Virginia compound. DSP meanwhile got found out for spending 80 grand on a gacha game, pissing off everyone.
Both creators were reduced to hard toil. Gruelling 13 hour streaming schedules for up to six days a week, scraping together what precious little donos they could, their dream careers made into living nightmares they could not escape.
Pool’s overhead in particular saw him consistently in the red. With bankruptcy looming, and the threat of bitter antifa imminent, Pool made the bald gambit to capitalise off an altogether different nation state: Israel.
As a client state of the US, Pool chanced that his patriotic credos might rise once more if he began signalling their virtue. Moreso than that yet still, the maelstrom of drama surrounding the embattled entity would draw lucrative clicks from triggered libs and perchance even more of that public diplomacy spondulix that he likes so much.
The risk appears to have paid off and Pool sits now in the Whitehouse Pool (Press Pool) but Darksyde Phil is not happy.
“What happened to honest, meaningful content?” Burnell lamented in the midst of streaming 1996 JRPG Suikoden, “Tim Pool doesn’t have original content, all he can do is make fun of others. That’s called low brow, lowest common denominator content for dumb people. I get it. All he can do is milk people for content, because he doesn’t have any.”
Fans have criticized the pattern of digressions in recent streams, with Burnell ranting on other luminaries of the drama sphere such as Keemstar, Ethan Ralph and Steven Cambian. Tim Pool however was the first target with explicit support from the reinvigorated Trump admin. Kick user “ImaginaryDeadBunnyREAL” paid $2 to make Burnell read his contribution out loud “you call this meaningful content? You’ve just been grinding random encounters in a circle for the past half an hour!”
Burnell however was quick to clap back, “I’m familiarizing myself with the map, genius. Tim Pool probably didn’t know where Israel even was on a map until a few months ago. Ha ha!”
The fallout from the exchange would only become apparent the day after, with Israeli Telegram channels thrumming with outrage, recalibrating their usual screeds to focus on the historic Internet Personality. One such post, translated from the Hebrew, read, “we need to wipe Darksyde Phil off the face of the planet. We must leave no trace of his existence. The pig roach[sic] must be raped and executed before his wife and kin. We need to make a clear example of the enemies of the Jewish homeland.”
Some of Burnell’s more monomaniacal critics have followed along with Pool’s newfound ideology, instigating Israeli style drama of their own.
“Darksyde Flow” took to the streets of Vancouver, accusing Free Palestine demonstrators of Hamas affiliation and uploading the bodycam footage to Telegram. Elsewhere “Snort Hogan” showed public support in the YouTube Community tab for ICE, praising recent college campus raids to deport international students speaking out against atrocities.
Whilst Pool hasn’t responded directly, he has definitely been having a lot of fun, with what cultural commentators speculate was a “subtweet” targeting Burnell. The post (on X) simply read “israel derangement syndrome” which incensed many who might not have been privy to the internet celebrity spat. Whether the post had been directed at Burnell, or if he was simply hedging his bets, the manoeuvrer has established Pool as an up and coming stalwart of Israel related drama.
Worse yet for DSP, some openly suspect his indignity of being a calculated ploy to bring in a malignant, drama-centric audience.
Life long DSP detractor, Richard Masucci, spoke on the tit for tat on a YouTube stream of his own: “Darksyde Phil is talking complete horse shit. He doesn’t know anything about politics, nevermind Israel. He’s a liar and a fraud, everyone knows by now,” Masucci had intended to discuss the feasibility of the Nintendo Switch 2, but base passion seized his will, “I don’t think Tim Pool knows anything about Israel either, but the fact that Phil would sink to this level shows he isn’t above drama at all.”
Whether Burnell had intended to centre himself at a nexus of hatred and antisemitism matters little, he has no choice now but to play the hand he’s been dealt, while rival Pool reaps the spoils.